FEE: Free
accommodation and meals (lodgings are at the San Galgano abbey, a few km from
the excavations; meals excluded on weekends)

MINIMUM LENGTH
OF STAY: three weeks

LANGUAGE
SPOKEN: Italian (official), English

MINIMUM AGE
REQUIRED: 18.

EXPERIENCE
REQUIRED: No particular experience is required. But participants are requested
to:

- have an
anti-injury insurance covering also construction sites, extended for the
duration of their participation (in some cases University students are already
covered by their institution; anyway, there are quite cheap options online for
similar insurances);

- wear safety
shoes on the site;

- bring their
own pillow and sheets;

- if possible,
bring their own trowel.

APPLICATION DEADLINE:
until all the spaces are filled (ca. 25 per session), but anyway before August
10th 2014.

Miranduolo is a castle known from written documents since 1004 AD and abandoned during the early 14th c.; it is actually located in the woods of the Upper Merse valley, an important mining district south of Siena.

Excavations showed a much more complex and longer settlement history, making of Miranduolo a paradigmatic site for the understanding of early medieval Tuscany. It was founded during the 7th c. as a specialized settlement for iron extraction and transformation. In the 8th c. it evolved into a village of wooden huts based on an agricultural economy, with a clear social pattern of hierarchy. During the 9th-10th c. Miranduolo becomes a structured manorial site with a very populated village extending on the whole hill; finally, the monumental phase of the masonry castle, built around the mid-11th c., corresponds to a demographic regression of the site.

Note: During the excavation period seminars will be held on digital technologies applied to archaeology, preliminary cataloguing and studying of finds and live-excavation (real time updates on the website and on the Facebook page of the project).